Elevating Funeral Service Ellery Bowker & Welton Hong

DNA testing has become popular the last few years with promotion from companies that offer in-home testing and the possibility of discovering information about someone that otherwise wouldn't be accessible.  For families who have lost a loved one, but never had their DNA tested, the last opportunity to do so would be at the funeral home, prior to final disposition. 
 On this episode, we talk with the team at DNA Memorial about what DNA preservation is, why it's important, how it works, and most importantly, how it can help your funeral home by offering this service to families. 
 This is a great episode with an interesting topic.  We'd love to hear your feedback. 

Do funeral consumers see your funeral home as being friendly to members of the LGBTQ+ community? Do prospective employees (or current) view your funeral home as a place that is inclusive and welcoming?  On this episode, we talk with Timothy McLoone, a funeral director from Fluehr Funeral Home, and Dr. Sara Murphy, a death educator and faculty member at the University of Rhode Island, about why this topic is so important and how the right or wrong approach can impact your business. 

When you work "in" your funeral home, you make it run.  When you work "on" your funeral home, you make it grow.   In this episode, we talk about working "on" your funeral home, and the first step in doing that is taking a snapshot of where things are now.  A SWOT analysis is merely reviewing the landscape and examining your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, & Threats.  An honest assessment of where you stand in each area is the starting point to growing your funeral home.

Funeral home owners will face increased competition in 2021 and it's critical to have the right strategy.  On this episode, we discuss three things owners should focus on to win more calls and increase their market share.

Do you have defined goals for growing your at-need calls, preneed, or your profitability in 2021?  Have you analyzed what you've done so far in 2021 and what you need to do differently heading into the next year?  

The Peter Drucker quote "you can't manage what you don't measure" is absolutely true, and on this episode, we discuss how successful funeral home operators think about their business and why goal setting is critical to their success.  Ellery and Welton share insights on: 

 1. When you should start setting goals for the new year
 2. What goals you should be setting
 3. Why call volume alone is not a good measure of success

#elevatingfuneralservice

If you're a funeral home owner, at some point, you're going to exit the business, and hopefully, that is through a successful acquisition.  Whether an interested party has approached you or you've put it on the market, the offer(s) you receive, and eventual selling price, can be significantly impacted by a few key metrics that you may not even realize. 
On this episode, we talk with Jake Johnson about what acquirers look at when purchasing a funeral home or cemetery and why this should matter to owners, even if they have no plans to sell. 
We dive deep into the following:
1. What makes a funeral home or cemetery attractive to an acquirer?
2.  What key metrics have the most significant impact on valuation?
3.  What an owner can start doing today to prepare for an eventual sale
 #elevatingfuneralservice